For a long time it has been desired to produce acoustic devices, particularly musical instruments such as guitars, using soundboards constructed from synthetic polymers rather than wood as is traditionally done. Such devices would be relatively simple and inexpensive to manufacture and the production of devices having reproducible acoustic properties would be reduced from the complex skill-dependent job of an artisan to a controllable manufacturing process.
There have been many attempts to produce musical instruments having synthetic polymer-based soundboards, e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 4,353,862, U.S. Pat. No. 4,364,990, U.S. Pat. No. 4,429,608, U.S. Pat. No. 4,969,381, U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,907, U.S. Pat. No. 4,188,850, U.S. Pat. No. 4,185,534, U.S. Pat. No. 4,213,370, U.S. Pat. No. 4,290,336, U.S. Pat. No. 4,334,452, U.S. Pat. No. 5,469,769, U.S. Pat. No. 5,804,746 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,290,336.
However, such instruments have typically suffered from the problem that they have been of a complex construction (for example with soundboards requiring carbon fibre or glass fibre reinforcements), are costly to manufacture, and have a sound quality not comparable to sound produced by instruments having the traditional wooden soundboard.